For this reason, many wine enthusiasts will have the first of March pencilled in their calendars, and quite rightly so, as it is the annual release of Te Mata Estate’s flagship Coleraine.
This year, the vineyard is releasing its much-anticipated 2021 vintage. In celebration, we delve deeper into why this wine is the perfect addition to your cellar. The secondary market for high-quality wines has proliferated in the last five years as collectors seek the perfect drop to drink or cellar. Over the last decade, the most sought-after wines have been those from Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Champagne.
However, New Zealand has been hot on the headliners’ heels, achieving increased global recognition and value. All Coleraine vintages are seeing huge demand, especially those from the 1980s. Production of these wines is finite, creating a bespoke and rare offering.
In Feb 2021, Webb’s sold a single bottle of 1982 Coleraine, the first ever vintage of Te Mata Estates flagship label, for $355. Just one month later, $888 was realised for the same vintage. Later that year, a higher price of $948 was achieved.
Later vintages have also seen incredible value increases, further reiterating the Te Mata Estate Coleraine as a niche investment for your cellar. In January this year, a new record was set for the 1988 vintage, sold at $1,224. While these records stand out dramatically, acquiring Coleraine for your cellar can be obtainable with the average price for a bottle at Webb’s sitting at just over $200.
The new release of the 2021 vintage will be presented at Webb’s for $140, setting you up for potential growth in New Zealand flagship wine. Te Mata Estates’ consistency and quality hold them front of mind for any wine lover in New Zealand and, increasingly, abroad.
If you want to learn more about Te Mata Estate Coleraine or are thinking of bringing your bottles to market, contact our specialists today for an obligation-free appraisal.
What makes a wine great? I’d suggest that what makes any wine great is also what makes them unique.
How can you compare a Petrus, predominantly a merlot from the right bank of Bordeaux, to a Latour, predominantly a cabernet sauvignon from the left bank?
These wines are different blends and, accordingly, different blends emerge from different soils. The varietals that suit the vineyard best will, in turn, create wine components that can be blended – not to a formula, but differently each year.
Technical spaces for red wine specialisation – like a cuverie – improve the variety of ferments that can be individually developed and the control that can be exercised around their care.
At Te Mata Estate we hand pick and then sort the fruit using the Armbruster system of de-stemming and grading, followed by another further round of hand sorting. We have 34 separate, small tanks available to us, and therefore over 68 batch ferments are possible in total.
We then have total temperature control throughout our fermentation and barrel ageing. The components are further developed in oak with topping, and three-monthly racking, before being finally blended – the crucial moment where the final wine is ‘framed’ according to what makes the best totality.
In composing our wines this way at Te Mata Estate our aim to use this ‘best-in-the-world’ model, rather than just a New Zealand model.
It’s a method based on what makes great wine great, and it takes a team of skilled operators working together to achieve it.
People who know us well look at Te Mata Estate differently, because we approach winemaking differently.
Yes, it is about equipment, fruit quality, precision winemaking, and the right staff.
But ultimately, it’s about the ability to create a wine that speaks honestly of our specifically-selected vineyards and our Hawkes Bay environment.
– April 2025
THE BEST NEW ZEALAND WINES OF 2024 – #1 COLERAINE IS OFTEN CONSIDERED NEW ZEALAND’S ‘FIRST GROWTH’, COLERAINE IS EASILY THE ESTATE’S MOSTFAMOUS AND INSTANTLY RECOGNISABLE WINE. AT US$92 (NZ$160), AN EXTRAORDINARY PRICE FORONE OF NEW ZEALAND’S – AND THE WORLD’S – GREATEST WINES.COLERAINE IS, INDEED, NEW ZEALAND’S BEST WINE.- DON KAVANAGH, WINE SEARCHER
COLERAINE IS NEW ZEALAND’S MOST ICONIC RED WINE.IT HAS EARNED THAT STATUS SINCE 1982.- BOB CAMPBELL MW
EVERY BIT NEW ZEALAND’S ‘FIRST GROWTH’, WITH A REPUTATION FORUNWAVERING CONSISTENCY. JUST GLORY.- ANDREW GRAHAM, AUSTRALIAN WINE REVIEW
THE LEGENDARY CABERNET SAUVIGNON AND MERLOT BLEND OF NEW ZEALAND.NEW ZEALAND’S SASSICAIA.- JAMES SUCKLING, JAMESSUCKLING.COM
COLERAINE FROM TE MATA IS NEW ZEALAND’S GREATEST CABERNET BLEND … EVERY 1% PAYS OFF,AND THAT IS THE DEFINING DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GOOD ESTATE AND A GREAT ONE.- ERIN LARKIN, ROBERT PARKER’S WINE ADVOCATE
‘The recent pandemic reaction closed borders all over the world removing global travel as an outlet option for discretionary income. This has meant people with means have had to look elsewhere for something to spend the money they had budgeted for experiential consumption as opposed to those funds earmarked for developing more purely financial returns.
Of course, they could have just tweaked their budgets to jam yet more cash into their commercial property or crypto currency portfolios but, seeing as they had already mentally put this money aside for other purposes, many didn’t automatically do this. Instead, they allowed themselves to wander into verdant green investment fields – just for fun, as a defiant riposte to having the joys of exploring a Cairo rug market on a Saturday morning snatched away from them.
Two of the categories to benefit most from this investment rambling have been the respective worlds of art and wine:
Art vs Wine
Everyone knows the benefits of art investment can be stupendous; news outlets seem to delight in reporting the latest ‘ridiculous’ sums paid for some doodle created by Pablo Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci or, especially of late, Vincent Van Gogh. Yet it hasn’t just been the gallery headliners who have cashed in during the pandemic, anecdotally local artists in places like the Kapiti Coast and Waiheke Island have never had it so good as investors have flocked in pushing both prices and turnover up.
But art investment does have a couple of not-insignificant drawbacks; the somewhat macabre practice of waiting for the artists themselves to die before seeing a major value jump; and the fact that it isn’t very experiential. Aside from that weird craze of bicycle eating a few years ago, consuming your art investment has never really caught on. (Although you can never discount that completely as it appears some people will do absolutely anything to gain followers on TikTok!)
On the other hand, wine investment offers the delicious option of actually drinking your assets in future should you choose to do so. This could be to celebrate a momentous occasion such as a daughter’s wedding or to impress – and hopefully win new/continued business from – important and highly valued clients.
Te Mata Coleraine
Air New Zealand did the latter recently when they busted out two vertical collections – i.e., a bottle of every vintage from 1982 until the present – of Te Mata Estate’s iconic Coleraine wine at an exclusive tasting for international guests in both Australia and New Zealand. The company had bought the wine assemblages at a 2016 auction at Mossgreen Webb’s Auction House for $5,600 – or for around $195 a bottle. At the time this was both the largest single-wine collection and highest overall auction price for any New Zealand wine ever.
A mere year later this record went west however as Webb’s Auction House in Auckland notified Te Mata that their Coleraine ’07 was now fetching $204 per bottle. Soon after, Coleraine ’03 set yet another new record of $216 a bottle.
Of course, part of this regular increase in value is due to the exceptional quality of Te Mata Coleraine and the high esteem in which the wine is regarded internationally. Well-respected wine critics like Huon Hooke of Australia’s The Real Review have described Coleraine as ‘a great wine from the very first vintage’ while Linda Murphy wrote: ‘Te Mata Estate’s Coleraine is a New Zealand national treasure.’ The Coleraine’s reputation as New Zealand’s only repeatedly 100 Point scoring wine has also seen it regularly listed in James Suckling’s ‘Top 50 Wines of the World.’
Yet more records
But the true impact of the last two years or so of pandemic-instigated wine investment can be seen in the massive step up in value from those auction prices only a few years ago to more contemporary times. In early 2021, Webb’s Auction House made ‘another record-breaking sale’ for Te Mata wines this time including aged Awatea, Elston, Cape Crest and Zara Viognier as well as Coleraine. But by the end of last year, Coleraine was at it again with one of the first ever 1982 vintages going for a staggering $948. Considering that the original bottle had been sold on the shelves for only $15 – it seems to have proved a pretty good investment!
Obviously, with returns like that, wine investment is here to stay and it also seems to be fast becoming the new norm as a secondary market fundraiser too. Another complete vertical Coleraine collection was bought for $19,000 in 2018 by Nick Stewart of Stewart Financial Group who then promptly donated it to charity. This collection is about to go to auction now with all proceeds earmarked to go to the Cranford Hospice and, going by the current trajectory, they should expect a very tidy windfall indeed.
The future of discretionary income investment?
So now, even though the borders are reopening across the globe, universal shortages in flights, cabin and ground crew staff have meant that international travel has a long way to go yet to reach the user-friendly levels we all enjoyed pre-Covid. Until these issues are rectified, perhaps it might be prudent to consider using your potential discretionary income on wine investment rather than book air tickets that could get cancelled again and again due to staff shortages here, there and everywhere. And, in the unlikely event that your wine doesn’t perform as well as you hoped, you can always just throw a great big party to drink it all and damn the torpedoes. Talk about an experiential win/win!’
Want to age that bottle, but don’t know how to store it? Or for how long? This month in Kia Ora Magazine, Bob Campbell MW writes about ageing New Zealand reds and tasting an older Coleraine:
‘Anyone who has held on to a special wine for a long time faces the dilemma of when to open it. I was asked about this by a friend who had stored a magnum of Te Mata Estate Coleraine 2000 since he bought it 16 years ago. It is a robust blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc.
My heart sank slightly when he told me he’d stored it in the garage. “It’s quite cool,” he added. Variable storage temperatures cause wines to leak past the cork allowing air to enter the bottle. You can get an idea of how well an old wine has been stored by standing the bottle upright and looking at the gap between the cork and wine level. If the gap is less than 10mm there’s every chance it will be fine. As the level drops so do your chance of tasting good wine.
Corks vary considerably too and, as a result, so does the wine in each bottle. There was a possibility poor storage or a dodgy cork had allowed by friend’s Coleraine to spoil. I suggested the wine be opened and enjoyed as soon as possible. We set a date for dinner.
There was an air of anticipation among the dinner guests. We could be tasting a great wine, but we might be sipping vinegar. The wine level was perfect, raising hopes. A crumbly cork had our host worried, but the cork chips were easily removed with a tea strainer.
The wine was better than I’d dared to expect. Age had given it a silken texture. It was a peacock’s tail of flavours – delicate berry and floral characters with oriental spices, cigar box, old leather and a hint of nutty oak.
Our latest Cellaring Guide is available online, as well as our recommended storage protocols…
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